Perez: It was a shame we damaged the car

As if the confidence Perez gained from his two third places in the USA and Turkey wasn't enough, his home fans attending the 2021 Formula 1 Mexican Grand Prix, are sure to accumulate more confidence for their local hero.

However, the Red Bull driver has to deal with a setback, as he crashed his RB16B early in FP1 at Turn 16 of the dusty circuit, which meant a long repair job keeping him in the team garage for most of the session.

However Perez recovered in the remaining 20 mins of the session to finish fourth 0.146s off his teammate, Max Verstappen's pace.

However, FP2 saw the Mexican's gap to Verstappen increase to 0.570s.

The 31-year-old spoke in his team's Friday media brief about his day and started by addressing his morning crash.

"I think we didn’t lose that much progress today, despite the shunt in FP1," he claimed. "It was a shame we damaged the car and we gave a little bit of extra work to the boys in the garage but other than that incident it was a positive day.

"I am feeling more comfortable on the long runs than over one lap, so I think there is still the potential to improve the car on the short runs," Perez went on.

"I have one more session to work on them and my target is to be on that front row tomorrow. The margins are going to be very close in qualifying to the Mercedes but hopefully we can lock out that front row."

Despite the gap to his teammate increasing in the second practice session, the former Racing Point driver is not perturbed, and still confident of his weekend progress.

"I don’t think it has been a representative day in terms of predicting qualifying, tomorrow everything will be even closer, and it will be interesting to see how we all line up," Perez explained.

He then spared a word for his adoring Mexican fans, and said: "The fans have been incredible already, it is great to look around and have so much support here, everyone is being so enthusiastic and is pushing me to go faster.

"Every time I stop the car, I can hear the crowd and it’s only Friday," the Guadalajara-born driver concluded.

While Perez and his fans would love for their favorite driver to win this weekend, the fact remains that the he is not in contention for the Drivers' Title this season, whereas his teammate, Max Verstappen is, which means that should Red Bull find the wrong driver leading the race, some tough and unpopular decisions might be taken.